Indian Express 08.10.2010
Civic body to hire former judge to recover Rs 51 cr property tax
Express News Service Tags : Pune Municipal Corporation, PMC, civic body Posted: Fri Oct 08 2010, 01:44 hrs
Pune: To recover property tax dues of Rs 51 crore and resolve 210 pending cases, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has planned to appoint a retired high court judge, since in the past a similar appointment had helped the civic body resolve propery tax disputes and recover Rs 2.51 crore from tax defaulters.The civic administration had initiated various steps to encourage regular payment of taxes by giving discounts for payment within first two months of the financial year. However, it continues to face a problem in recovering tax from the properties due to delay in payment for some or the other reason.
“A large amount of the revenue gets stuck due to disputes wherein the property owner gets a court stay on payment of tax. The number of cases having disputes is increasing and the recovery of tax was becoming a problem. Thus, a retired high court judge was appointed as an arbitrator to resolve the disputes and it helped the civic body collect Rs 2.51 crore and solve 65 disputes,” said Vilas Kanade, Property Tax Assessment and Collection Officer, in the proposal tabled in the standing committee.
The arbitrator is appointed for 11 months at a monthly remuneration of Rs 22,000. There is a need to extend the appointment of arbitrator to recover the pending dues of Rs 51 crore,” added Kanade.Meanwhile, the civic administration has intensified its action against defaulters by sealing the properties and recently managed to recover Rs 65 lakh dues by sealing properties at Kharadi. On Thursday, it sealed five more commercial properties which has dues of Rs 30 lakh.
